Hi Mary!

This is conceptually very clear and your findings make a lot of sense to me.  I do have a few questions.  I'm a little confused by two things about your analysis.  First, you're reporting on Pearson correlations which are used with two continuous numeric variables.  What is the measure of the two PDs you're using in those analyses?  Symptom counts? Severity?  Second, I'm trying to understand what you mean by "controlled" variables.  You use controlled and standardized interchangeably, but they mean different things.  Are you talking about standardizing the aggression measures (turning them into z scores within your sample) or something else?  I was also wondering how many BPD folks you actually had in the sample.  The sample is hugely weighted toward men, so I would expect there would be far more ASPD folks than BPD folks in the sample, given typical epidemiological sex differences in the two disorders.  If you had a large number of men with BPD, do you think they might be different from women with BPD in terms of aggression? Were any of the women in the sample diagnosed with ASPD?  

These findings are so interesting, I want to be sure I really understand them!

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Cheers,

Dr. Hunt

This is such a fascinating study and draws attention to important methodological issues. I would love to know more about the sample and methodology. Great job!

Mary

Interesting questions! Why does it matter whether you can or cannot separate the two types of aggression? Would you treat them differently?  I may have missed it, but I don't think I understood the difference between the two measures - the one that supported the hypotheses and one that did not. Standardization will not change the correlations, so what what it? Another survey? What does Controlled and Uncontrolled mean? 

Best wishes

Barb Mellers

Hi Mary,

Very nice presentation and poster layout. The double dissociation between ASPD and BPD is intriguing! What was the motivation for your hypotheses? What distinguishes uncontrolled from controlled/standardized measures? Minor statistical question - Were comparisons made between ASPD and BPD groups?

Good job!
Mike Arcaro